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This is a complete story in four chapters. There’s some romance, but don’t worry, there’s some torture and some fear and some tea and scones and there’s a happy ending in Chapter Four. There’s also someone wearing grubby white socks, but no sex or slavery. Its marked mature because of the mobster. Oh, and trigger warning, this story is probably not suitable for people with an irrational fear of spiders.

Chapter 1: Little Hampsbury
I’d seen the old village stocks on a random drive down country lanes one day, taking the slowest plausible route back to college at the start of term. They were on a triangle of grass near the entrance to some old church or other, less than an hour from Manchester. I thought about them off and on for a few days, sitting in my dorm room writing history essays, and then mostly forgot about them and the quaint little village of Little Hampsbury. I wish I’d entirely forgotten.

*

One day in June our first-year exams were over. A bunch of us were sitting in the dorm common room, including Sam, whom I’d wanted to ask out ever since I first met him and never dared. So when there was no-one else around for a moment I said to him, “We could go for a drive, take some food and some weed and get out of here for a few hours,” and he looked longingly at me, looked like he wanted nothing more, and said,

“Yeah, Julian, but….—”

“But what? Let’s go! Now! We’ll stop at a pub somewhere for lunch!”

“What if something happens?”

“It will, we’ll have an OK time. Hey, bring your new camera maybe.”
The new camera was all the bait Sam needed. It’d been a birthday present a couple of weeks earlier and he’d been too busy with exams to do anything with it. So we drove off, and of course ended up back at that tiny village, Little Hampsbury, with its village shop and its pub, The Unicorn.
“Chicken sandwiches and two pints coming right up. We’ll bring the food out for you,” the landlord said, although he looked old and frail enough that he might not make it across the room. The smell of stale smoke and old piss was so strong that we said we’d eat outside if that was all right, and it was a full half hour before the food arrived, carried out by a lady who might have been my grandmother or the landlord’s daughter.

“We had to pop into town and buy more bread,” the lady explained, “as we don’t get much call for food these days. I’ll be off then.”
“I think that used to be lettuce,” Sam said dismally.
“No, definitely stinging nettles and thistles. lettuce would have rotted by now.”

“Right. And is that chicken? Or the remains of the last customers?”

“It’s bits that fell off the zombie parson from the church. Highly infectious.”

“Jules?¨

“Yeah?”

“Do you…” Sam tailed off nervously, using the back of his hand to push his hair out of his face, hair that looked so greasy it was almost black instead of its natural light brown. “I mean…”

“You can say it,” I said, as gently as I could.

“Do you like me?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Is that bad?”

“I mean… I saw that band poster in your room and…”

“And wondered if I’m gay?”

Sam coloured and nodded, biting into his zombie-meat sandwich.

“Yeah, I’m gay. But…”

“But you don’t…” Sam swallowed bread and tried again, “You don’t fancy me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“OK…

We ate for a little while in silence, sipping beer, and then Sam said, “I wouldn’t be cross if you did.”

“Thanks. I… I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know you all that well. We’ve lived in the same corridor all year but we haven’t talked that much. I… Oh…” I’d been pretty slow. I thought we were just friends, but suddenly wondered.

“Sam, why don’t you come round and sit next to me and we can talk more quietly?”
Sam extricated himself from the wooden picnic bench and came round to where I’d made room for him, in the shade of a rather tatty canvas parasol. He was about the same height as me but thinner, and had the almost-translucent pasty skin of someone who eats too much fast food. Or not enough vegetables maybe. He wore long trousers and a thin sweater which, I now noticed, bore a designer logo. So no, his clothes were supposed to look like that. Me, I just had shorts and a tee-shirt. I put my left arm round his shoulders; he flinched for a moment but then started to relax into me. I whispered,
“And do you like me?”

“Yeah. Ever since that first day.”

“When we moved in?”

“Yeah. Dad had just dropped me off with all my stuff and I couldn’t face three flights of stairs. I sat down and cried and cried. And then suddenly you were there and helped carry stuff, and then others did, and I was moved in, and it wasn’t just that you helped, you were cheerful and told jokes and smiled and… and… you’re going to hate me…” Sam broke off, got out a tissue.

“I won’t hate you. What’s wrong?” You always had to tread gently round Sam.

“That first day. It was late afternoon. You hair, you had it in curls back then.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that, that perm was a present for graduating from school.”

“Well, when you stood holding my box of books, the sun was to your right and half your face was lit up and half was in shadow. And your hair looked like it was on fire, bright orange. And I thought…” Sam hesitated, took a deep breath, “And I thought you must be an angel.”

“I could get it permed again tomorrow. Don’t know about growing wings though.” I still had my arm around Sam’s shoulders so I gave him a squeeze. He turned away but not before I saw the tears in his eyes.

“Sam. Sam, it’s OK. What’s wrong?”

“You… You’re being… n… nice…” he stammered.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“But we’re just friends on the same dorm, it’s not like you—”

“Sshhhh. Fuck I saw where I’d gone wrong. “Sam, when you asked if I fancied you—”

“You said no.”

“I didn’t say no. I said I didn’t know. Not then.”

“Um… that was only five minutes ago.”

“Look at me, Sam.”
I moved my left hand so it was cradling the back of his head and gently pressed him forward, kissed him on the lips. Yes, his hair smelled of rancid grease. No, not rancid grease. A spice. He’d got gel in it or something to make it look greasy. Yes, his skin was pasty. Yes, his clothes probably needed washing. But under it all he was honest and incredibly fey and graceful, without having the slightest idea how close he was to being a gay twink sex icon. I kissed him and tasted zombie chicken and managed not to giggle and was glad because he broke free, gasped for air, kissed me back, kissed me like he was never going to let go, then stared in shock for a moment right into my eyes, inches away from my face, blinked, blinked again, blurted, “I love you¸I fucking love you,” then broke down and wept, his whole body shaking. “I love you too, Sam. I’ve waited for a chance to be alone with you all term. Maybe the photos can wait for another day.”
“W… w….”—he was still crying—“what photos? I brought my new camera but I don’t know how to turn it on.”

I squeezed him again. “Nothing rude or anything. There’s an old church and I wanted to try and draw it over the holidays.”

“So you want a picture?”

“Yeah. Would you mind?”
The change in Sam was instant: he had a purpose, he knew what to do, he was on safer ground. Soon the two of us were walking up the hill and into the churchyard. We studied the manual for the camera together; in the end my course in Japanese was about as useful as reading the English, and we got several good pictures of the church. “Do you think its open?”
“Dunno, let’s see,” Sam gathered up his camera bag and slung it over one shoulder.

“If it isn’t, we could sit here in the porch and—”

“What if the ladies come to do the flowers?”

“You’re the only flower I need.” He let me kiss him again and this time didn’t cry. He was starting to believe it was real. And it was real. I was believing it too.

“What’re you thinking?” Sam asked.

“I… I was wishing we’ done this at the start of the year. On that first day.

“Me too.”

The door was locked but Sam insisted we try the others and the door to the South, which had a larger porch, was unlocked and standing slightly open. As our eyes adjusted to the dark I could smell candle-wax and floor-polish and centuries of worship. I reached out and held Sam’s hand—and suddenly he pulled sharply, suddenly I knew it wasn’t Sam, that something had happened to Sam, that I was being tackled and—at the same instant someone hit the backs of my legs and I crumpled to the floor. There were people on top of me. My arms were pulled behind my back, click handcuffs fastened.
It had taken only a couple of seconds. We were kneeling on the tiled floor, me in shorts and Sam in his long designer jeans, both of us handcuffed and blindfolded. There were at least eight of the men, some middle-aged or older, at least a couple not much older than us by the sound of them and the way they moved.
“What do you want?” I shouted, “Let us go! Get off!”

A calm voice: “I think they’re unhappy.”

“They sounded pretty happy down at the pub.”

“We don’t want their sort inside our church.”

“Right.”

“Let is go! Look, let J—… let the other one go and keep me, I’ll do whatever you want!”

“I’ve read about your sort. No.”

Sam grunted a few times as he was kicked. I tried to get up, to help him, but strong arms held me down. I shouted,

“Stop it! Let us go! This is har—” and then one of them kicked me in the stomach and I was trying not to throw up. Trying, and failing, making a mess on the floor.

I heard a vicious falsetto, “I’ll get a bucket, dearies.”
People were moving round; the door closed and opened a few times. There were still at least thee people there to hold me down. Then someone grabbed my left leg: click and a hard leg-cuff of some sort went round it, and, moments later, round the other leg. The chain-rattle told me I wouldn’t be able to escape by running. Then hands forced my mouth open and soon I was biting down on a thick rope that was tied behind my head. Someone set a metal bucket down on the floor near me.
“Couldn’t find a rag or anything.”

“I’ve found a rag right here.” A hand grabbed the bottom of my tee-shirt. There was a ripping sound and cold air against my side, my back, my chest. Snip, snip, went the sleeves, the neck. Then I was blinded for a moment as the light poured into my eyes—what light there was.

“Mop it up. use your feet. Or your hands. Or we’ll make you lick—”

“That’s enough of that talk. Boy, clean up your mess.”

I rolled over onto my side, then sat. I got the remains of my shirt into the bucket but couldn’t see how to get it out again. I pushed off my shoes but the leg-irons went over my white socks so in the end I thrust one foot into the bucket, ignored the pain of the hot water, squeezed the shirt between my soles, and started to mop.
Meanwhile, the others were tormenting Sam, hitting him and kicking him. Then one said,
“You’re a queer, right? Admit it.”

“Play this back.”

And there, sitting on that cold hard quarry-tile floor mopping up the vomited remains of a zombie-meat sandwich with wet-socked feet and a torn tee-shirt, I heard a perfectly clear recording of our entire lunch-time conversation. What the fuck? Why?
“Now,” kick “You” kick “Are” kick “An” kick “Anus.”
“Don’t bother denying it.”

“Guilty as charged.” The third voice was one of the older ones, but still strong.
About then someone decided I’d done enough mopping: the blindfold went back on and I was lifted up by my armpits and set down on my knees.
“All that remains—”

“Is for the jury—”

“That’s us!”

“To decide on”

And they all chorused together, “A punishment!”

Description
body div#devskin13723308 .bigger { font-size:150%; line-height:1.7; } body div#devskin13723308 div.text { color:black; }

This is a complete story in four chapters. There’s some romance, but don’t worry, there’s some torture and some fear and some tea and scones and there’s a happy ending in Chapter Four. There’s also someone wearing grubby white socks, but no sex or slavery. Its marked mature because of the mobster. Oh, and trigger warning, this story is probably not suitable for people with an irrational fear of spiders.

Chapter 1: Little Hampsbury
I’d seen the old village stocks on a random drive down country lanes one day, taking the slowest plausible route back to college at the start of term. They were on a triangle of grass near the entrance to some old church or other, less than an hour from Manchester. I thought about them off and on for a few days, sitting in my dorm room writing history essays, and then mostly forgot about them and the quaint little village of Little Hampsbury. I wish I’d entirely forgotten.

*

One day in June our first-year exams were over. A bunch of us were sitting in the dorm common room, including Sam, whom I’d wanted to ask out ever since I first met him and never dared. So when there was no-one else around for a moment I said to him, “We could go for a drive, take some food and some weed and get out of here for a few hours,” and he looked longingly at me, looked like he wanted nothing more, and said,

“Yeah, Julian, but….—”

“But what? Let’s go! Now! We’ll stop at a pub somewhere for lunch!”

“What if something happens?”

“It will, we’ll have an OK time. Hey, bring your new camera maybe.”
The new camera was all the bait Sam needed. It’d been a birthday present a couple of weeks earlier and he’d been too busy with exams to do anything with it. So we drove off, and of course ended up back at that tiny village, Little Hampsbury, with its village shop and its pub, The Unicorn.
“Chicken sandwiches and two pints coming right up. We’ll bring the food out for you,” the landlord said, although he looked old and frail enough that he might not make it across the room. The smell of stale smoke and old piss was so strong that we said we’d eat outside if that was all right, and it was a full half hour before the food arrived, carried out by a lady who might have been my grandmother or the landlord’s daughter.

“We had to pop into town and buy more bread,” the lady explained, “as we don’t get much call for food these days. I’ll be off then.”
“I think that used to be lettuce,” Sam said dismally.
“No, definitely stinging nettles and thistles. lettuce would have rotted by now.”

“Right. And is that chicken? Or the remains of the last customers?”

“It’s bits that fell off the zombie parson from the church. Highly infectious.”

“Jules?¨

“Yeah?”

“Do you…” Sam tailed off nervously, using the back of his hand to push his hair out of his face, hair that looked so greasy it was almost black instead of its natural light brown. “I mean…”

“You can say it,” I said, as gently as I could.

“Do you like me?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Is that bad?”

“I mean… I saw that band poster in your room and…”

“And wondered if I’m gay?”

Sam coloured and nodded, biting into his zombie-meat sandwich.

“Yeah, I’m gay. But…”

“But you don’t…” Sam swallowed bread and tried again, “You don’t fancy me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“OK…

We ate for a little while in silence, sipping beer, and then Sam said, “I wouldn’t be cross if you did.”

“Thanks. I… I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know you all that well. We’ve lived in the same corridor all year but we haven’t talked that much. I… Oh…” I’d been pretty slow. I thought we were just friends, but suddenly wondered.

“Sam, why don’t you come round and sit next to me and we can talk more quietly?”
Sam extricated himself from the wooden picnic bench and came round to where I’d made room for him, in the shade of a rather tatty canvas parasol. He was about the same height as me but thinner, and had the almost-translucent pasty skin of someone who eats too much fast food. Or not enough vegetables maybe. He wore long trousers and a thin sweater which, I now noticed, bore a designer logo. So no, his clothes were supposed to look like that. Me, I just had shorts and a tee-shirt. I put my left arm round his shoulders; he flinched for a moment but then started to relax into me. I whispered,
“And do you like me?”

“Yeah. Ever since that first day.”

“When we moved in?”

“Yeah. Dad had just dropped me off with all my stuff and I couldn’t face three flights of stairs. I sat down and cried and cried. And then suddenly you were there and helped carry stuff, and then others did, and I was moved in, and it wasn’t just that you helped, you were cheerful and told jokes and smiled and… and… you’re going to hate me…” Sam broke off, got out a tissue.

“I won’t hate you. What’s wrong?” You always had to tread gently round Sam.

“That first day. It was late afternoon. You hair, you had it in curls back then.”

“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that, that perm was a present for graduating from school.”

“Well, when you stood holding my box of books, the sun was to your right and half your face was lit up and half was in shadow. And your hair looked like it was on fire, bright orange. And I thought…” Sam hesitated, took a deep breath, “And I thought you must be an angel.”

“I could get it permed again tomorrow. Don’t know about growing wings though.” I still had my arm around Sam’s shoulders so I gave him a squeeze. He turned away but not before I saw the tears in his eyes.

“Sam. Sam, it’s OK. What’s wrong?”

“You… You’re being… n… nice…” he stammered.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“But we’re just friends on the same dorm, it’s not like you—”

“Sshhhh. Fuck I saw where I’d gone wrong. “Sam, when you asked if I fancied you—”

“You said no.”

“I didn’t say no. I said I didn’t know. Not then.”

“Um… that was only five minutes ago.”

“Look at me, Sam.”
I moved my left hand so it was cradling the back of his head and gently pressed him forward, kissed him on the lips. Yes, his hair smelled of rancid grease. No, not rancid grease. A spice. He’d got gel in it or something to make it look greasy. Yes, his skin was pasty. Yes, his clothes probably needed washing. But under it all he was honest and incredibly fey and graceful, without having the slightest idea how close he was to being a gay twink sex icon. I kissed him and tasted zombie chicken and managed not to giggle and was glad because he broke free, gasped for air, kissed me back, kissed me like he was never going to let go, then stared in shock for a moment right into my eyes, inches away from my face, blinked, blinked again, blurted, “I love you¸I fucking love you,” then broke down and wept, his whole body shaking. “I love you too, Sam. I’ve waited for a chance to be alone with you all term. Maybe the photos can wait for another day.”
“W… w….”—he was still crying—“what photos? I brought my new camera but I don’t know how to turn it on.”

I squeezed him again. “Nothing rude or anything. There’s an old church and I wanted to try and draw it over the holidays.”

“So you want a picture?”

“Yeah. Would you mind?”
The change in Sam was instant: he had a purpose, he knew what to do, he was on safer ground. Soon the two of us were walking up the hill and into the churchyard. We studied the manual for the camera together; in the end my course in Japanese was about as useful as reading the English, and we got several good pictures of the church. “Do you think its open?”
“Dunno, let’s see,” Sam gathered up his camera bag and slung it over one shoulder.

“If it isn’t, we could sit here in the porch and—”

“What if the ladies come to do the flowers?”

“You’re the only flower I need.” He let me kiss him again and this time didn’t cry. He was starting to believe it was real. And it was real. I was believing it too.

“What’re you thinking?” Sam asked.

“I… I was wishing we’ done this at the start of the year. On that first day.

“Me too.”

The door was locked but Sam insisted we try the others and the door to the South, which had a larger porch, was unlocked and standing slightly open. As our eyes adjusted to the dark I could smell candle-wax and floor-polish and centuries of worship. I reached out and held Sam’s hand—and suddenly he pulled sharply, suddenly I knew it wasn’t Sam, that something had happened to Sam, that I was being tackled and—at the same instant someone hit the backs of my legs and I crumpled to the floor. There were people on top of me. My arms were pulled behind my back, click handcuffs fastened.
It had taken only a couple of seconds. We were kneeling on the tiled floor, me in shorts and Sam in his long designer jeans, both of us handcuffed and blindfolded. There were at least eight of the men, some middle-aged or older, at least a couple not much older than us by the sound of them and the way they moved.
“What do you want?” I shouted, “Let us go! Get off!”

A calm voice: “I think they’re unhappy.”

“They sounded pretty happy down at the pub.”

“We don’t want their sort inside our church.”

“Right.”

“Let is go! Look, let J—… let the other one go and keep me, I’ll do whatever you want!”

“I’ve read about your sort. No.”

Sam grunted a few times as he was kicked. I tried to get up, to help him, but strong arms held me down. I shouted,

“Stop it! Let us go! This is har—” and then one of them kicked me in the stomach and I was trying not to throw up. Trying, and failing, making a mess on the floor.

I heard a vicious falsetto, “I’ll get a bucket, dearies.”
People were moving round; the door closed and opened a few times. There were still at least thee people there to hold me down. Then someone grabbed my left leg: click and a hard leg-cuff of some sort went round it, and, moments later, round the other leg. The chain-rattle told me I wouldn’t be able to escape by running. Then hands forced my mouth open and soon I was biting down on a thick rope that was tied behind my head. Someone set a metal bucket down on the floor near me.
“Couldn’t find a rag or anything.”

“I’ve found a rag right here.” A hand grabbed the bottom of my tee-shirt. There was a ripping sound and cold air against my side, my back, my chest. Snip, snip, went the sleeves, the neck. Then I was blinded for a moment as the light poured into my eyes—what light there was.

“Mop it up. use your feet. Or your hands. Or we’ll make you lick—”

“That’s enough of that talk. Boy, clean up your mess.”

I rolled over onto my side, then sat. I got the remains of my shirt into the bucket but couldn’t see how to get it out again. I pushed off my shoes but the leg-irons went over my white socks so in the end I thrust one foot into the bucket, ignored the pain of the hot water, squeezed the shirt between my soles, and started to mop.
Meanwhile, the others were tormenting Sam, hitting him and kicking him. Then one said,
“You’re a queer, right? Admit it.”

“Play this back.”

And there, sitting on that cold hard quarry-tile floor mopping up the vomited remains of a zombie-meat sandwich with wet-socked feet and a torn tee-shirt, I heard a perfectly clear recording of our entire lunch-time conversation. What the fuck? Why?
“Now,” kick “You” kick “Are” kick “An” kick “Anus.”
“Don’t bother denying it.”

“Guilty as charged.” The third voice was one of the older ones, but still strong.
About then someone decided I’d done enough mopping: the blindfold went back on and I was lifted up by my armpits and set down on my knees.
“All that remains—”

“Is for the jury—”

“That’s us!”

“To decide on”

And they all chorused together, “A punishment!”